News for Victorian Government Schools: We’re on the Schools Mental Health Menu!
Are you up to date with the Schools Mental Health Menu? We’re extremely proud to announce that The Big Sister Experience is now featured for 2025-2027. If you work for a Victorian government school, find out what this means for your school’s mental health and wellbeing curriculum below. You can also read more here.
Victorian Schools Mental Health Fund
Over the last four years, the Victorian government has made significant investments to support student wellbeing with the Mental Health Fund. Underpinning the Fund is the evidence-based Mental Health Menu, a list of hand-selected student wellbeing programs that eligible schools can use their funding for.
The Big Sister Experience is now featured on the menu for 2025-2027. This means you can use your funding to purchase our empowering, evidence-based programs for students and/or staff.
What’s Funded?
With options for Year 4 to Year 12 female-identifying and gender-diverse students, The Complete Big Sister Experience is designed to address student mental health at the grassroots level. Integrating with the curriculum, our workshop modules address the key themes of Health and Physical Education, Creative and Critical Thinking, and Personal and Social Capability.
As part of the Mental Health Menu, Victorian government schools can use funding for all three of The Complete Big Sister Experience’s full-day student workshops for secondary and primary students.
The three 5-hour student workshops are to be completed by the same cohort over 12–18 months. From self-love and body image to recognising the signs of anxiety, setting healthy boundaries, and LGBTIQA+ inclusion; our modules are all delivered with a heart-centred and authentic approach by our Big Sisters.
You can also purchase our Educator Workshops, comprising an In-Person Professional Learning Session delivered over one hour, and two Pre-Recorded Sessions (along with extra resources).
Why The Big Sister Experience?
To qualify for the Mental Health Menu, our programs were externally assessed and deemed to meet a range of criteria:
Evidence of program effectiveness in supporting student mental health and wellbeing outcomes
Alignment with department priorities
Ease of implementation by schools
Availability of providers
Cost-effectiveness
We always collect pre- and post-survey data to measure our impact on student wellbeing. Independent evaluations by La Trobe University have shown that The Big Sister Experience has a positive and lasting effect on students’ mental health, and we are currently partnering with them for a full longitudinal study to be completed in 2025 – which your school can be a part of.
How to Access Funding for 2025
Ready to bring The Big Sister Experience to your school using the Schools Mental Health Funding? Book a Discovery Call so we can chat about your school’s needs and explore how we can help. From there, we can advise you on the next steps in the process of using your funding for our programs. We’ll be with you every step of the way to ensure everything runs smoothly. You can read more about the Schools Mental Health Fund here.